Chapter 21: When Fiction is Presented as Fact. Perhaps no passage in Scripture has had as much counterfeit history written about it as the passage we've been discussing in 1 Corinthians 11 about the head covering. As we've already discussed, commentators act as if they know what was happening behind the scenes within the Corinthian church. In truth, none of us know anything. Theologians also pretend to have many insights about the pagan world in which these Corinthian Christians lived.
For example, the 19th-century commentator, Adam Clarke, says this about the passage: "The only difference marked by the apostle was, the man had his head uncovered because he was the representative of Christ; the woman had hers covered because she was placed by the order of God in a state of subjection to the man, and because it was a custom both among the Greeks and Romans and among the Jews an express law that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil.
This was and is a common custom through all the East, and none but public prostitutes go without veils." A person doesn't have to read any further than his own Bible to be able to spot Clarke's first fabrication.
He indicates that the apostle required a woman to have her head covered when praying and prophesying because she was placed by the order of God in a state of subjection to the man, and because it was a custom both among the Greeks and Romans and among the Jews an express law that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil. However, what Paul said was every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.
For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn; but if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For man indeed ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man; for man is not from woman but woman from man, nor was man created for the woman but woman for the man. For this reason, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels." 1 Corinthians 11:5-10.
Now, Paul gives two reasons for his instructions: first, headship; and second, because of the angels. Nowhere does he say anything about Roman, Greek, or Jewish customs. That's something that Adam Clarke made up. Unfortunately, that wasn't Clarke's only fabrication. Let's look at some of his others. Greek and Roman Customs. Clarke claims that it was a Greek and Roman custom that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil. But as is true with most commentators, Clarke offers no proof for this assertion.
I'm certainly no authority on Greek or Roman public life, but I've read many ancient Greek and Roman writings. Now, I've never come across anything indicating that Greek and Roman women were not to appear in public without veils. I also have seen plenty of Greek and Roman sculptures and paintings from the New Testament era, and they certainly don't validate Clarke's assertion either.
What we do learn from Greek and Roman literature and art is that in the New Testament era, some Roman and Greek women wore transparent veils at various times. Such veils appear to have been worn more for adornment than anything else. We also know that Greek and Roman women typically wore a shawl known as a palla around their shoulders. Sometimes they draped this over their heads. However, there's certainly nothing in Greek and Roman literature to connect the palla with any teaching on headship.
Jewish Women and the Veil. Next, Clarke boldly proclaims that among the Jews it was an express law that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil. But the only express law the first-century Jews had was the Mosaic Law, and any Christian can read the law and see that there is no such commandment in the law. Yes, but perhaps the rabbis had made some additional law about the veil, you may reply. But as I've mentioned, we don't have any rabbinical writings from the New Testament period.
The earliest collection of rabbinical teachings we have is the Mishnah in 200 AD, and there is nothing in the Mishnah that requires a Jewish woman to wear a veil when she goes out in public. In fact, I've been able to find only one brief reference to the veil in the Mishnah. It's in the section that discusses what men and women may wear in public on the Sabbath. It says this: "A woman may go out in hair ribbons and with a headband, sewn head bangles, a hairnet or false locks. Arabian women may go out veiled.
Median women may go out with cloaks looped up over their shoulders." So there was certainly no express law in the Mishnah that women had to wear a veil. Actually, the Mishnah forbids a woman to wear a veil on the Sabbath unless she resides in Arabia, where all women are expected to wear a veil in public. This would indicate that the Jewish veil was worn primarily for adornment. That's the very thing we see in Scripture.
Isaiah prophesied concerning the Israelite women, "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a jingling with their feet. Therefore, the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their secret parts.
In that day, the Lord will take away the finery, the jingling anklets, the scarves, and the crescents, the pendants, the bracelets, and the veils, the headdresses, the leg ornaments, and the headbands, the perfume boxes, the charms, and the rings." Isaiah 3:16-21. So evidently, the veil was customarily worn by Jewish women, but it was an ornament, not a symbol of headship.
Actually, one of the most revealing sources of evidence we have about Jewish women and the veil is found in a work of the early Christian writer Tertullian. He says, "Among the Jews, so usual is it for their women to have the head veiled that they may thereby be recognized." This is a significant piece of historical evidence. It not only verifies that Jewish women customarily wore veils, as the Scriptures indicate, but it also reveals that most Gentile women in Tertullian's day didn't.
If a Jewish woman could be recognized because she wore a veil, then obviously the Roman women weren't normally wearing them. And the Christians that Paul wrote to in Corinth were primarily Greeks and Romans, not Jews. An Eastern Custom? Next, Clarke claims that veiling was and is a common custom throughout the East. What Clarke said is similar to what Matthew Henry said in his commentary concerning this passage.
"To understand this, it must be observed that it was a signification, either of shame or subjection, for persons to be veiled or covered in the Eastern country." Most commentaries today say similar things. But are their claims true? To begin with, it's not true that the veil was symbolic of shame or subjection, as Matthew Henry claims. It's just the contrary. As we've seen, Isaiah shows that the veil was a symbol of pride and ornament for Jewish women.
That's why the Mishnah forbids women from wearing a veil on the Sabbath. Of course, most people today know that it's customary today in the Mid East for women to wear a veil or scarf. So most Christians accept without question that Eastern women wore veils in Paul's day. Ah, but is that true? You see, women wear veils in most Middle Eastern countries today because those are Muslim countries. But Islam didn't even come into existence until the 7th century AD, hundreds of years after the New Testament was written.
Islam exported Arabian culture to the countries it conquered. Now, as I've mentioned, Arabian women customarily wore veils in ancient times. The question is not, what do women in the Middle East wear today, but what were the dress customs in the Middle East in Paul's day before Islam? In other words, how did Egyptians, Syrians, Galatians, Persians, Chaldeans, Elamites, and other peoples of the Middle East dress in the first century? That is no easy task to discover.
It's not as though there were any encyclopedias, picture books, or travelogues from that time. Nevertheless, we do have paintings, statues, and artifacts from ancient Egypt, Syria, Persia, Assyria, and Babylonia. You've no doubt seen pictures of ancient Egyptian women found in tombs and other places. The Egyptian women in those paintings normally don't have their heads covered, do they?
In some Middle Eastern countries, such as Syria, the paintings and statues would indicate that women commonly wore shawls that they could drape over their heads. However, in other places, the paintings and sculptures indicate that the women wore no kind of head covering at all, the same as in ancient Egypt. To read the customs of Mid-Eastern countries today, back into Paul's day, is a mark of a blind guide. But the blindness of the theologians and commentators goes even further in this regard.
Even a child can look at a world atlas and see that Corinth is not situated in the East. It's located in Greece, and Greece is known as the cradle of Western civilization. Ancient Corinth was not an Eastern city. So in the end, even if all the commentators' remarks about Eastern civilization were accurate, they're completely irrelevant. Prostitutes and Corinth. Adam Clarke's final claim, one often repeated today, is that only prostitutes went around in public without a veil.
Nowadays, most commentators, such as William Barclay, claimed that Corinth was a licentious city filled with prostitutes. The commentators say that it was important for the Christian women to wear veils so they wouldn't be mistaken for prostitutes. To begin with, Paul says nothing about any such thing as a reason for the head covering. The only reasons he gives are headship and because of the angels.
Furthermore, commentators also seem to forget that the head covering is a two-part commandment, one for men and one for women. If the issue was prostitutes, why would Paul tell men to uncover their heads when praying or prophesying? What are the commentators going to tell us next? That the only men in Corinth who covered their heads were male prostitutes?
What's more, these commentators are somehow mistakenly interpreting 1 Corinthians 11 as though the head covering was a special commandment given only to the Corinthians. However, the force of Paul's argument is that apparently some of the Corinthians weren't following the practice already in place in the rest of the church. The commandment has nothing to do with Corinth.
The only reason the commandment is found in Paul's letter to the Corinthians is that apparently some of the Corinthian church were rebelling against it. Furthermore, where is the evidence that only prostitutes went out in public without a veil? As we've already seen from Tertullian's earlier quotation, Jewish women were recognizable because they wore a veil. So obviously, most Greek and Roman women in his day didn't wear a veil. So it's untrue that only prostitutes didn't wear veils.
This is merely another piece of pseudo-history fabricated by commentators. There's a reason why none of them ever provide any historical evidence to back up their claims. It's because there is no such evidence. Finally, what about this business of Corinth being a particularly licentious city filled with prostitutes? In his commentary, Barclay calls it probably the most licentious city in the world.
The rumor that Corinth was exceptionally licentious probably got started from a passage found in the ancient work Geography, written by the Roman geographer Strabo. In his work, Strabo says this about Corinth, "And the temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple slaves, prostitutes whom both men and women had dedicated to the goddess. And therefore, it was also on account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew rich.
For instance, the ship's captains freely squandered their money and hence the proverb, 'Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth.'" Well, at first glance, it seems that the Roman geographer Strabo confirms that the commentators are at least correct in saying that Corinth was a licentious city. Perhaps the commentators finally have some of their history correct. But do they? Let's keep reading what Strabo has to say.
"The Corinthians, when they were subject to Philip, not only sided with him in his quarrel with the Romans, but individually behaved so contemptuously toward the Romans that certain persons ventured to pour down filth upon the Roman ambassadors when passing by their house. However, for this and other offenses, they soon paid the penalty, for a considerable army was sent there and the city itself was razed to the ground.
Now, after Corinth had remained deserted for a long time, it was rebuilt by the deified Caesar because of its favorable position. He colonized it with people that belonged for the most part to the freedmen class." So the truth is that the Greek Corinth, with its temple to Aphrodite and a thousand prostitutes, was completely destroyed, and the site remained desolate for a long time. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar rebuilt a new Corinth.
This new Corinth had no temple to Aphrodite, and it was a Roman colony, meaning that Roman citizens, in this case, freedmen, settled there. So the Corinth that existed in Paul's day was the Roman Corinth, which had no special reputation for prostitutes or immorality.
In fact, Strabo concludes his discussion about Roman Corinth by saying, "The city of the Corinthians then was always great and wealthy, and it was well equipped with men skilled both in the affairs of state and in the craftsmen's arts, for both here and in Sicyon, the arts of painting and sculpturing, and also at charge of the craftsmen, flourished the most.
However, the city had land that was not very fertile, but rifted and rough, and from this fact, everyone calls Corinth protruding, and they use this proverb, 'Corinth is both protruding and full of hollows.'" So by Paul's day, Corinth was no longer known for its prostitutes, but for its skilled craftsmen and infertile land. Now, what I've given you is merely one example of the counterfeit history that theologians use to distort what the Scriptures actually teach.
I can fill volumes with examples of the counterfeit history found in commentaries, study Bibles, and other theological literature. Let me give you a few more examples.